[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] All right. Well, I'm very pleased to introduce our first, uh, full length talk for today.
We have Simon Harbin, who is professor of English language and literature and fellow and tutor in English at Malden College, Oxford.
He has published widely on medieval literature and the English language.
He has lectured to a variety of audiences on C.S. Lewis and has published articles on Lewis's scholarly writings.
He is the author of C.S. Lewis Oxford with the Bodleian Publishing, which examines the role that Oxford, its colleges, libraries,
chapels, common rooms and pubs played in fostering the work of one of the 20th century's most influential writers and thinkers.
So please welcome Professor Simon Harman. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Grace, for the introduction. Um, and this, I think, follows on quite neatly from what Caroline's just been talking about,
because what I want to think about is where the origins of Narnia lie.
Uh, and particularly thinking about it in relation to Kes Lewis's, uh, biography, his early years, but also particularly his Oxford life.
Um, and I thought that, uh, a useful starting point for that would be the moment when he first matriculated in Oxford.
And we have a nice photo here of his matriculation at University College in, uh, April 1917.
And here he is with the entire student body, uh, you.
And it's quite, uh, it's quite telling, I think, isn't it?
What sort of strange time it was to come up and be a student in Oxford.
And in fact, Lewis himself by November of that year was also on the Western Front.
But that's him back, right, by the way. Um, if you don't recognise him and he's actually a student there of classics.
So Caroline is talking about the importance of the Oxford English course.
Uh, but the classical course is obviously also important to, uh, as we know and as you heard yesterday from,
uh, Beppo Pettine and Lewis, uh, unlike Tolkien, completed the, um, the Oxford Classics degree.
I mean, the, the break for, uh, fighting in the First World War.
He came back, returned to Oxford at the beginning of 1919 and did his, uh, classics degree, getting a double first.
And then at the end of it, he set out to become an academic philosopher, in fact,
applied for philosophy jobs, including one, uh, in classical languages and literature and mood length.
Uh, but he was unsuccessful. We still have his rejection letter in the college archives.
Um, but, uh, in the meantime,
his tutor suggested that it would be a good idea to do an English degree because there were more jobs going in English at that time.
It was a relatively new subject, and he thought that would increase his opportunities to to get an academic position.
And so and given that Lewis had read much of the Oxford English course already, uh, even though, uh, as we heard it was focussed really on the,
uh, old Middle English, uh, periods, that was essentially what Lewis read as a, as a, as a young man.
So he was already pretty well read in that course.
And in fact, he did it in a year and graduated with another first.
And at this point, Maudlin College advertised its first tutorial fellowship in English.
This is in 1925, and Lewis successfully applied for it.
So it turned out to be great advice from his tutor because he he snapped up a job quite soon afterwards,
so he moved in to more laid into the new buildings here in the summer of 1925 was actually the centenary of that moment right now.
Um, and here he is sitting in his rooms, um,
in this familiar surroundings that we often see pictures of him surrounded by numerous pipes and ink wells and the tools of his trade, I suppose.
Um, and he was here from 1925 to 1954, uh, when he moved to Cambridge.
But of course, he done much of his writing during that Oxford period.
So, again, I think this focus on Oxford is quite relevant.
Thinking about Lewis two. And it's also in those rooms that he met with, uh, the inklings,
which is obviously another important group for thinking about Oxford Fantasy, which sort of coalesced around Lewis and Tolkien.
It's actually a group that began at University College. It was founded by one of the students there.
Um, and they gave it the name inklings. But when the student left, the group fizzled out and Lewis and Tolkien kept meeting.
And then they took the group from the name to Merlin,
where it would meet on a Thursday night after dinner to read to each other from the work that they were writing.
We all know about the Inklings and The Eagle and Child, which is also, uh, a regular meeting haunt.
But actually that was a Tuesday morning sort of drinking and gossiping kind of event rather than the serious business of reading to each other.
So I think the importance of of the interaction between these groups is obviously significant for Lewis.
And it's worth remembering that, uh, he didn't begin his fantasy writing with Narnia.
Um, so this is a famous quotation from a letter that Tolkien wrote in the 60s, uh,
about how they began the process of writing, um, what for Lewis became, uh, space travel books.
Um, where apparently Lewis had said to Tolkien one day, toddlers, there's too little of what we really like in stories.
I'm afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves. We agree that he should write space travel, and I should write time travel.
And so that's what led to Lewis writing out of the Silent Planet, the first of what became a trilogy, uh, Para Lander and then That Hideous Strength.
Um, and of course, Tolkien, in the meantime, wrote some of, but not very much of The Lost Road.
And the inklings was a really quite productive period for Lewis that those Second World War years,
when he wrote much of his, uh, best known works, the first of his apologetics, Problem of Pain.
And then, as I said, out of the Silent Planet, which was also read to the inklings, uh, Screwtape Letters, then Peril, Landry,
The Great Divorce, and the meantime, Tolkien's reading what they called the New Hobbit book, which was obviously Lord of the rings.
And that's that famous inklings letter, which you've probably seen reproduced in various books.
It's a it's a thank you letter that Lewis wrote to one of his American supporters who sent him food parcels,
uh, during and after the war, because of rationing.
Um, and they've just at this point eaten ham that he sent, um, and partake and partake in of his health, drank his health, and then they all sign it.
So you can see we've got Lewis we've got at the bottom.
Uh, J.R.R. Tolkien, uh, but we also have Christopher Tolkien, who was invited along when he was a student here in Oxford.
And, uh, he also read English. I should point out, in fact, was taught by C.S. Lewis.
Um, and, um, but then other people to some from the English faculty.
So Hugo Dyson and Lord David Cecil, both members of the English faculty.
But Colin Hardy was a tutor in classics at maudlin.
And then we've also got, um, uh, Harvard, uh, Robert Harvard, who was Lewis's doctor, and Warnie Lewis's.
He was a returning soldier, Lewis's brother. Uh, so it's a bit more of a mixed group.
Um, but I think it does still focus in and around the university, and particularly the study of English and classics.
And one of the things to point out about this, in sort of my prelude to thinking about Narnia,
is that what made Lewis famous, in fact, was The Screwtape Letters.
You know, that's what makes him become a household name both here and in the USA.
Um, so, for instance, you know, you may have seen this picture of him appearing on time magazine.
Uh, which was dated to, uh, September 1947.
It's 1947. So that's when he's really become, you know, very big name in the US.
And you can see the devil on his shoulder that, uh, and it says Oxford, C.S. Lewis, his heresy, Christianity.
So, you know, sort of reference explicitly to, um, to Screwtape, the book that became such a bestseller.
And, um, the point to sort of emphasise there is that, of course, that's before he didn't begun publishing the Narnia stories.
So this is this is what made him a big name. He, even in Britain, appeared in a photoshoot in Vogue magazine in July 1950.
I don't know how many maudlin fellows have ever had a photoshoot in Vogue.
Uh, spike? Not many. Yeah, it's. I ever get invited to do one.
I'm not going to do it in my dressing gown.
Uh uh, it famously was very cold in the new buildings in that period, with sort of rationing on coal and those central heating.
So he did teach in his dressing gown. Um, but why he did the photo shoot in it.
I have no idea what exactly that pose it's supposed to be. I'm also unclear.
Um, okay. So and 1950 is actually the date of the first of the Narnia stories, The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe.
But it didn't come out until October of that year. So again, it sort of proves my point.
I think that it he was still a household name, uh, or at least the, the he was very well known before the books for which he is best known today.
So that brings me on to the 19 stories, and particularly The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe,
and to sort of address that question of where did this come from?
Because actually, it's not an obvious move for a bachelor dom living in Maudling College in his 40s,
who's written some fantasy fiction, but also lots of Christian apologetics.
At the time, he was working on his major contribution, uh, to scholarship, which was his volume for the Oxford History of English Literature,
which took him so long, and he always called it the oh [INAUDIBLE] volume.
Uh, but but he did, you know, eventually publish it as a major contribution to the study of the 16th century.
So he was working on that.
Um, and you might think, well, why at that point would he decide to write a children's story, uh, and why this particular kind of children's story?
Well, of course, there are lots of different explanations, and probably the best known one.
Certainly, if you hire an Oxford tour guide to take you around Oxford, this is the one that you will be told.
Which is that, uh, it was walking out of, uh, Saint Mary, the Virgin University church one snowy winter's evening,
uh, that he found himself in Saint Mary's passage, uh, with the, uh,
the lamp post and then opposite him, this doorway with these two, um, strikingly, uh, uh,
gilded fawns on either side of it and then carved into the wooden door what appears to be a lion.
It's head that gave Lewis that moment where suddenly all those different features of the first Narnia story kind of coalesced in his imagination.
And so you've got, um, Lucy going through the wardrobe and being confronted by, uh, Mr. Tumnus,
the blanket of snow, the lamp post of lantern waste, and then subsequently, Aslan.
And that's obviously a great story. I'm somewhat sceptical of it as I will as I will explain, but I can see it's it's power.
Uh, and of course, you know, when we talk about Lewis's Oxford, we need to think about that.
The Oxford today and the way that Lewis has his own stories of start a parts of the Oxford that we know today.
And I sometimes take people round Oxford talking about, uh, Lewis's legacy.
And, uh, I can be sure in fact, I did it about a couple of weeks ago, went to the to that very spot to to pour cold water on that very story.
And no fewer than three different tourist groups turned up to tell exactly that story while I was there.
So it's kind of prove my point, but it also shows how powerful, how powerful the story is.
The reason why I'm sceptical of it.
Well, there are a number of reasons, but the key bone, I suppose, is that Lewis gave a very different account of where the story came from.
Uh, when he was interviewed, uh, and asked about it,
he said all seven of my Narnia books and my three science fiction books began with seeing pictures in my head.
At first they were not a story, just pictures.
The lion all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy woods.
This picture had been in my head since I was about 16, and one day when I was about 40, I said to myself, let's try to make a story about it.
So it's quite an intriguing account, isn't it? Um.
And Lewis himself casts scorn elsewhere, by the way, on accounts that authors gave of how stories came to him.
Which makes you wonder about it. But but, you know, he's very clear on the idea that it begins with pictures.
Uh, just as Tolkien says, it all began with names.
Um. Or words for Lewis. It's visual. Um, but it goes back to when he was about 16, uh, which is before he ever set foot in Oxford.
Uh, so if we want to be, you know, sort of really literal about this, then it really can't have been that doorway that inspired him.
Um, but of course, that just pushes it back to his Belfast childhood.
And of course, you won't be surprised to hear there are many lampposts in Belfast, Belfast have wardrobes and so on that that acclaimed.
Um, and in fact, one particular wardrobe is this one, um, which is the one that now stands in the Marian Wade Centre Museum,
Wheaton College, just outside Chicago, which is the Lewis family wardrobes carved by Lewis's grandfather.
Um, the, uh, when when his father died, Lewis had it shipped over from Belfast so that he could have it in his Oxford home.
So it's obviously important, uh, wardrobe and, um, various stories of growing up about it and said that when he was a small boy,
uh, he used to sit in the wardrobe and tell stories to his brother.
Um, I don't know how you know how easy it would be to sit in that wardrobe, but maybe I'm being too literal about all of this.
Uh, and also being even more literal,
the one in the story we're told is the sort of wardrobe that has a looking glass in the door, and this one doesn't.
Uh, so again, you know, that fails the test in that regard.
But, you know, should we think about fantasy in terms of, you know, trying to locate the real world inspiration for something?
This, incidentally, is the house that Lewis grew up in, little Lee in Belfast.
It's the one he describes at the beginning of Surprise by Joseph.
You know, when he says, they moved from this small house to this enormous house in the countryside?
Um, and there was a little room at the end of the upstairs passage where his brother and he apparently used to go and write stories.
Now that we can believe, because many of those stories survive, um, a world that they created have talking animals, um, called boxing.
And you might think, well, this is an obvious first sort of, um, start on the Narnia stories.
We've got animals, um, talking addressed.
Uh, but in fact, it lacks any of the kind of actual fantasy element these are essentially.
Um, but they act and behave and talk as if they were humans.
Um, and they talk about politics and things. And it's Lewis trying to be very grown up.
And in fact, he says in surprise by joining that there is no trace of the kind of imaginative
world which which he was inhabiting and which which he was reading extensively.
Uh, but he wasn't writing it really at that point. And, um, I said that there were various inspirations around Belfast that acclaimed.
And here's a, here's the church where this is baptised, which was where his grandfather was the minister.
Um, this is the vicarage. Um, and this is, it's, uh, this is its door knob, uh, which again is of course,
there's a little plaque saying, you know, this may have been the inspiration for Aslan.
Um, but you know, another thing that that Lewis himself did point to when he was asked about the inspiration for Narnia was
that he said he got the name for the place from a classical atlas that he was using when he was a schoolboy.
Um, and this is that classical atlas.
And here, you know, if you can make it out. But there is a place on it called Narnia.
It's now Naani in Italy and sort of hilltop town, Umbria.
And he said that he was just looking through this map. So the Latin form of Narnia is Narnia.
And that he just he drew upon that name because he liked the sound of it.
Um, again, that's interesting in relation to what I said about Tolkien and place names, I think.
So Narnia was already there in his mind as a, as a an interesting name.
Of course, he never went that or anything. I mean, there was like Tolkien was not well travelled at all.
So that brings us then to back to Oxford. I think I've sort of suggested that he got the idea.
Um, these pictures were in his mind when he was back in his teens.
Um, and he was obviously writing stories, reading widely.
Um, but it's but it's not until in his 40s, when he's living in Oxford, that he decides to see if he can make a story about it.
And we might wonder why at that particular point where he decide to do that.
Well, I said he was living in the new buildings and woodland, so he moved in there in 1925.
But in 1930 he also bought a family home on the edge of Oxford in rising Hirst, known as The Kilns.
Uh, if you haven't been that, you can make an appointment. It's now for a study centre owned by an American foundation.
But you can make an appointment in go and have a guided tour of the kilns. It's been reconstructed to look exactly as it was when they lived there.
It's not actually authentic, but but it does give you the sense of it.
And why this is significant, I think, is because in 1939, four schoolgirls were evacuated from London,
uh, to avoid the bombing and brought to this house, um, on the edge of Oxford.
And throughout that they would sort of change over, over, over time.
But throughout the war, he had these factory children living with him.
And he writes very warmly about them to his friends at the time.
And he says, I never really appreciated children until the war brought them to me.
So I think that's a point where he's sort of looking back at his own childhood.
He even says to, you know, his brother at one point, you know, they they keep saying, what shall we do?
He says nothing like our childhood because they, you know, they were immersed in their stories and their imaginative worlds.
I think he's sort of somewhat frustrated and surprised at these children and their their lack of imagination.
Um, but he obviously enjoys having them around. And so that that I think is quite striking, not least because, of course,
if we remember how the book opens, um, that I'm the witch and the wardrobe, that is,
it's with four children being evacuated from London to stay with a, um,
a somewhat forgetful old professor living in a rambling house in the countryside.
Um, so it's it's not difficult to see where Louis might be.
You know why? That might be the trigger that makes him think at this point, the children around, he's got a context for the book.
And at that point, he decides to to see if he can make a story about it.
We don't know exactly when that happened, but there is a first go which survives on the, uh,
back of a page on a story called The Dark Tower, which was an unfinished science fiction story that Lewis had begun writing.
Never finished. But on the back of one of those leaves is this aborted opening.
Um, and I'll show you just a transcription of it so you can see what it says.
So as this book is about four children whose names were, um, Martin, Rose and Peter, but it is most about Peter, who was the youngest.
They all had to go away from London suddenly because of air raids, and because father,
who was in the army, had gone off to the war and mother was doing some kind of war work.
They were sent to stay with a relation of mothers, who is a very old professor who lived by himself in the country.
So probably those of you who know the book well, we'll recognise that that is very similar to the King of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe.
But there are some kind of key and very striking differences, I think, on, uh, let's have a look at the, um.
The same beginning, but in the published version, once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war, because of the air raids.
They were sent to the house of an old professor who lived in the heart of a country ten miles from the nearest railway station,
and two miles from the nearest post office.
So I suppose the most striking difference there is to do with the names of the children, and particularly to the fact that Peter,
who the first one says this story's going to be mostly about because he was the youngest, has now become the oldest.
And Lucy, who's not mentioned before, has replaced him as the youngest.
And of course, you could really say that the story is mostly about Lucy, in the sense that she's the person who first finds Narnia.
That change, um, may well be related to the dedication that we find in the book, which is to, uh, to Lucy.
Lucy Barfield, the daughter of his great friend, uh, fellow student and fellow incoming Owen Barfield.
And, um, he says it's very it's very sweet dedication.
I'm just going to read it to you. So lovely. My dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you.
But when I began. Uh, when I began it, I had not realised that girls grow quicker than books.
As a result, you're already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and banned, you will be older still.
But someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it and tell me what you think of it.
I should probably be too deaf to hear and too old to understand a word you say.
But I shall still be your affectionate godfather. C.S. Lewis.
Uh, and that's that's Lucy Barfield in 1947. So he's clearly, in some senses, addressing this to a particular Lucy as well.
And that's obviously part of, of the change that that undergoes.
But I think other than that, I mean, the other obvious connection is that if we think of him as a, um,
the doddery old professor who's living in the countryside, we also remember that he's called, um, Professor Kirk,
which is a nod to his old, um, uh, the not school teacher, because Lewis left school at the age of 14 and went for private tuition,
uh, in English, um, in a village in Surrey, um, where he was taught by, uh, Kirkpatrick.
Uh, and there's clearly, you know, influences that. But other than that, I think we don't find many personal influences in, in the story as it is.
Um, so where do these ideas come from now? Um, where do some of the, um, what was it in Lewis's life at that time,
and particularly his life as an Oxford English tutor that may have influenced, uh, the stories.
And I want to explore some of those things,
going back to some of the things that Caroline mentioned about the nature of the English course and how it might have influenced these stories.
Uh. One.
One feature of these stories, of course, in the 90 stories, is that there are all kinds of strange beasts, mixtures of, um, human and mythical beasts.
Um, there's there's a nice example of that where Edmund is walking through the, uh, witch's, uh,
courtyard where he's surrounded by these, um, strange creatures that have been turned to stone.
Um, and he says there are lots of them standing around like pieces on a chessboard.
Um, and these include things like, uh, wolves, bears, cats, mountains and dragons and, um, and then later on, of course, there's even a kangaroo.
Um, one possible inspiration for that that I've, uh, that I'm sort of intrigued by, but I, you know, as you know,
sceptical of the idea that there are particular real world influence of these strange creatures that inhabit the um,
cloisters at Maudling College, standing, uh, like the stone statues rather like you get in the witch's courtyard.
And it says in that description that they were like chess pieces on a board.
And these are like little chess pieces sitting on that parapets around that.
But again, it's it's tempting, but there's another important, uh, influence, I think.
And if we look at another description of these strange mythical beasts that's here,
the creatures that side with the white witch in the story we're told, uh, uh, they're so they're so, um, terrifying that he can't describe them.
Because if he did, then the grownups wouldn't let them read.
The children read the stories, but he calls them cruel. And hags and incubus wraiths, horrors, efreet sprites, Orkneys ruses and etchings.
Now, I suspect the children were wondering what these creatures were, uh,
because they'd have had to have done some pretty recondite reading as children to know what a wus and Orkney and etting and so on were.
But one thing that they could have been reading to find out would have been Sir Gawain and the Green Knight attacks that,
of course, Lewis would be very familiar with as a, uh, as a young man, but also as a tutor.
One of the standard features of any medieval syllabus, 14th century alliterative poem.
And here you can see that Galloway, on his journey to find the Green Knight in the chapel, um, we're told that he he fights against worms.
Uh, dragons and wolves. What? Those, um, bulls and bulls eye bears and attains.
So these are giants. So these are the the etns and the woos.
Is is the word rose. And then we've got the wolves and the bulls and the bulls.
So many of the same creatures that are turning up with the White Witch here.
You can also find in this description, um, of Sir Gawain.
And we know that Lewis was, uh, a very careful student of this poem because his own copy actually survives, heavily annotated, like all his books,
even with some illustrations to help you make sure you understood all of the strange architectural, technical vocabulary that the poet uses there.
Um. And then Etns.
We find them not just at the, um, on the side of the White Witch and the lion, the witch and the wardrobe.
But of course we find them in etns more. Um, this is all English, Elton.
Um, that's that same line again, the Giants. And you can see that Louis is using etns more.
Um, and these are the etns that that the children um, scrubbing Poland public encounter.
Um, in the silver chair. And you can see I think Maus is also a feature of middle earth two and then wardrobes.
Um, that's the word, uh, in, uh, that, that Louis uses as was uh, would do was, uh,
which means it's an old English word for a wild man of the woods, a savage, uh, a satire or fawn.
Uh, and I've given you a quote there from, um, Lord of the rings, too, because, again, you know,
Lewis and Tolkien are very similar in their way of sort of taking these, uh, medieval words and repurposing them and in their fantasy worlds.
Um, and we know about orc, I'm sure. So Orkneys so the white, which also has the Orkneys on her side.
And this is the Old English word orc, demon or evil spirit, which again, of course, is another feature of, uh, Middle-Earth.
Another obvious source for these kinds of beasts. Are these lines in direwolf in which the poet tries to explain.
This is a Christian poet looking back on a pagan world and trying to understand how in a world created good,
could we have all these strange, monstrous creatures? And he says that they were all the progeny of Cain, the first murderer.
And he says, you know, along with those we find out on us.
That's the word Athens again. Giants.
And, um, Orkney has Orkneys, as Lewis called them, um, the orcs for Tolkien, such giants who for a long time warred against God.
Um. And worms. Um. This is the Old English word worm or dragon, which of course very important feature of Tolkiens world.
Now, we didn't see that. And we don't see that in The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe, in fact.
But worms do make an appearance later on, of course.
Um, and this scene here, the conversation with smoke, where Bilbo is trying to rescue the Ark and Stone, um, uh.
And, um. Uh, where you've got a dragon on a hoard of treasure.
Uh, does turn up also in Narnia, of course,
because Lewis draws on precisely the same sources as Tolkien is drawing on here in that famous episode in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
If you remember, um, where he's, um, where, um, Eustace finds himself, um, confronted by, uh, a dragon.
If you remember that, Eustace, that, of course, has read all the wrong books.
Um, when he was a child, he read books of information instead of books of imagination.
And it comes back to bite him, uh, when he finds himself confronted by, um, a huge hoard of treasure.
And he doesn't know what this might signify.
Um, so let me just read this, uh, bit to you at the bottom of the cliff, a little on his left hand was a low, dark hole.
The entrance to a cave, perhaps. And out of this, two thin wisps of smoke were coming.
And the loose stones just beneath the dark hollow were moving.
That was the noise he had heard. Just as if something were crawling in the dark behind them.
Something was crawling, were still something was coming out.
Edmund or Lucy, or you would have recognised it at once.
She says, I'm not recalling that, cause the reader does read books of imagination in fantasy.
But Eustace had read none of the right books.
The thing that came out of the cave was something he had never even imagined.
A long lead coloured snout. Dull red eyes.
No feathers or fur. A long, lithe body that trailed on the ground.
Legs whose elbows went right up higher than its back like a spider.
I don't know if dragons really have elbows, do they? But maybe that's the right word.
Um. Cruel claws. Bat's wings that made a rasping noise on the stones.
Yards of tail as the two lines of smoke were coming from its nostrils.
He never said the word dragon to himself, nor would it have made things any better if he had.
So here's a nice moment of encountering the fantastical, um, and being unable to, uh, recognise it.
Being able to recognise the danger that's clearly presented by a large, uh, hoard of treasure.
You know, because he read all the wrong books and even more significantly, of course, what goes on to happen is,
although you'd expect at this point, that would be some kind of big encounter between Eustace and the Dragon.
Like, of course, we get between Bilbo and Smaug in that great kind of riddling conversation, which itself comes straight from Old Norse.
Um, here the dragon simply drops down dead.
Um, and it's a somewhat anticlimactic kind of moment thing.
Think that that wasn't what I was expecting at all. Um, and what Eustace does is it starts to rain.
He goes in and has a sleep in the cave.
Um, and then, of course, he wakes up and finds what you or I would have known.
Anyone who's read all the right books is that if you go to sleep on a dragon's hoard with greedy,
dragon ish thoughts in your mind, you, of course, turn into a dragon.
Uh, that's evidently what had happened to the dragon in the first place.
And again, this goes right back to, uh, Volsung, a saga and to the Norse legends.
And so, you know, again, very like Tolkien, this is drawing upon, uh, the stories that he knew well,
uh, both from his reading as a child, but also from his work, uh, within the Oxford English faculty.
And so that's, I think, why, uh, the Oxford English course, particularly when it comes to Lewis and Tolkien,
is such a critical part of, um, uh, of both of the both of their fantasy worlds.
Um, and I think it's fair to say that, um, you know,
we need to think also about the relationship between the two men because they have a profound influence on each other.
You know, I think I sort of highlight the way in which they're both doing similar things,
using similar kinds of ideas and words to create similar kinds of effects.
Uh, Caroline mentioned the fact that the course in those days was rigorously philological.
Um, and I think that I'm sure she meant it in a positive way.
It wasn't fully implied.
Um, but but but Lewis, I think, came from a from a different tradition to Tolkien and that he was more kind of literary inclined in his viewpoint.
And in fact, you know, there's that famous story of their first meeting, uh, which very conveniently, Lewis left an account of it in his diary.
Um, this was in May 1926, so not long after Lewis had, uh, got his job at maudlin.
Tolkien returned to Oxford for meat, and the two men met at a meeting of the English faculty.
And, uh, they disagreed on a number of things.
They disagreed on the value of the works of Edmund Spenser. Uh, which must have really, uh, uh, irritated Lewis because he was a great fan of Spenser.
In. Tolkien said he couldn't read it because of the forms.
Uh, he didn't like the language. Uh, and then they disagreed on the prominence of, uh, language study to the English syllabus.
Very significantly. That was something that was that Lewis thought, uh, that Tolkien thought was the real thing in the language school.
As Lewis puts it. And and Tolkien, uh, Lewis was much more sceptical.
So I think they did disagree quite heavily on the extent to which the syllabus should be rigorously philological,
and to what extent it should be about reading literature. They both thought it should be about reading early literature.
I mean, Lewis again thought that modern literature.
Why would you? You don't need to teach somebody how to blow their nose, he says.
Uh, so why should you teach them how to read Dickens? And, um.
But but so they both believed it should be, uh, it should be focussed on these periods.
And so I think these texts were absolutely central to them. But but Lewis was somewhat slower to come to, uh, an appreciation of philology as it was.
Um, and that was really under the influence of Lewis.
And in fact, the syllabus that Tolkien created in the 1930s, which is a very rigorously philological one.
Uh, initially Lewis was quite sceptical of it, but Tolkien won him round and he became one of his great most sort of vociferous
supporters as they pushed through these big and far reaching changes to the syllabus.
And in fact, in the 50s, when the whole issue of syllabus reform came up again,
because it was the by that time quite a lot of pushback against philology, against the idea that everything should stop at 1830.
And, uh, there was a working group formed to, uh, decide on, on these matters.
And they came up and talking was on the working group. They came up with proposals to change it.
And when they were presented to the faculty, Lewis was outraged that Tolkien had gone against the syllabus they first both introduced,
and then he then went around campaigning so rigorously for this, for for keeping things status quo,
that even Tolkien voted against the proposals that he himself had put together.
So it was very confusing, isn't it? But essentially then they then stuck with.
So even in the 50s, this was still a rigorously philological, um, kind of, um, uh, syllabus.
But I think that's why it's so important, because these words like woos, um, Eton.
Worm, um, and so on are ones that, that they are.
And I'm sure if you heard something of this yesterday.
Thinking about talking the word end again, you know, he he talks about the word end,
which is an old English word for a giant being, a word that he wants to do something about.
Um, because they're words that are sort of like blank checks in a way.
Um, we don't know precisely what those refer to.
They refer to some creatures of olden times.
And that allows you the potential to to imagine, um, what they might have been like.
And I think that's that that's a kind of spur to both men.
So to do is just as much as it is to talking good.
So I think at that point I'm going to draw things to a conclusion.
And then I happy to take any questions that anyone might have.
Thank you. Um.
That's what I've been in back to when I was a child. First. Uh, with that philosophy wardrobe, one of the most memorable scenes for me was when, um,
Edmund meets the witches, uh, treated to Turkish delight and hot chocolate and it's life.
I was interested. I don't actually know much about casinos and history.
Many people are very well travelled, so I guess I'm curious what texture like problem is there?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good question.
Um, one I've pondered a lot. So, Turkey, Turkish connections.
Um. Aslan is the Turkish word for a lion.
And he says he met that in the tales of the Arabian Nights.
And he used it because he liked the sound of it.
But he also liked the fact that it has the word us. He pronounced it Aslan because s is the Norse word for a god.
So it is a it's a it's an interesting name. Um, and it's, it's Turkish.
So that that I don't think explains or answers your question, but, you know, sort of hints at a Turkish connection.
Um, and I suppose the other thing is, you know, if you read stories at the time, um, children's books that he read Nesbitt and so on.
Turkish Delight does pop up as a kind of fairly standard sweet treat.
Um, I don't know how many other kinds of sweet treats he would have known.
Uh, but the other one that I. That intrigues me.
Um, but, you know, you can post corn on this if you like, but, uh,
Maudling College after, uh, you know, we have a thing called second dessert in Oxford,
which is, you know, you've you've eaten dessert already, and then someone says, do you want some dessert?
And you think that's odd? And this is where different colleges do it differently.
But it's essentially a collection of sorts of. Exotic fruits.
Porte. Um. Uh, chocolates and so on.
But one thing we have at maudlin, which I have not yet found at any other colleges, second, dessert is Turkish delight.
So perhaps he was inspired by, you know, his own experience of eating it or a particular love of it.
Um, I don't know. Um, I will, maybe we have it at end because of money, which the order?
Um, I don't know. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. I wonder in a second, is that what's the situation in Vienna?
It looks interesting, isn't it? So, uh, one of the questions in mind we have, um, has to do with the use of Old English words by, uh, the US.
And the question is, do you think that this caused old English words to get popular in more recent fantasy?
Um, I would guess so. But I don't know enough about more recent fantasy to know if that's where they're getting it from.
Um, and what the specific examples would be, but that seems rather likely doesn't tell us.
And, um. I don't know if the person asking has a particular example, but that.
I mean, I guess it's either there or it's going back to the medieval sources themselves.
So in some cases it might be that. But I would have thought that, yeah, that to some extent that is being the more likely source.
Yeah. Thank you very much for this. I really enjoyed it.
And I especially enjoyed what you were saying at the end, sort of about the difference between Lewis and Tolkien on philology.
And took Lewis's more sort of literary sensibilities and, um, forgive me if you touched on this and I missed it, but, um, uh,
there's a there's a scholar, Michael Ward, who's written about, um, kind of the cosmological background to, um, to to Lewis's approach.
And it's sort of suggested that if you look at things like the Cosmic Trilogy with space trilogy and some of his poetry,
The Discarded image, these things that have to do with this sense of the medieval cosmology,
this might be, in fact, one of the Lewis's stronger drives, and that even you might see each of the planets represented in the Chronicles themselves.
Uh, do you have any thoughts on that at all? Uh, yeah.
Thanks. Um, I think that he spotted something that's important about the, uh, and he uses the term atmosphere of the stories,
which, you know, Lewis wrote about atmosphere being a really key part of storytelling.
Couldn't he? That famous essay on stories, which talks about how, why, why do we go back to our favourite stories?
Surely not for the plot, because we know what's going to happen is because of the atmosphere.
And I think and he talks. Michael Ward coined the term don't égalité, uh, you know, why do you go back to Donegal all the time?
And what is it about Donegal? And and it's the same for any place, you know, this sort of Oxford nearness of Oxford or something.
Um, and I think that this kind of planetary, uh, these planetary elements that he has identified are important and telling.
So, for instance, that he associates the land which then will drive with Jupiter.
Um, it's about kingship and so on. I think that I think there are lots of sort of important kind of resonances that
come out from having that foregrounded in the way that he's done in his book.
But I, I slightly shy away from his the kind of Narnia code type side of it, which is what the kind of popular version of Planet Narnia was called,
because it suggests that that was the kind of key to understanding these stories,
and that Lewis set out to hide it within them, and that it was there to kind of, you know, to to to explain them in some way.
And I think that just takes it too far. Uh, and not least because it's clear that Lewis wrote The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe as a one off.
And he didn't really intend to write a series of books at that point.
And at the end of it, he then starts thinking about a sequel.
One imagines the publisher is contacting him at the time and he's thinking, well, I probably got more, I can say, but he is.
He's casting around for ideas at that point. He's got plenty of them.
I mean, you know, his imagination is constantly bubbling up, I think.
But he hasn't. He's not planned ahead in the way that you would have to if you're thinking about it as a series of planetary, um, novels.
And then I think it does start to get going as a series.
And it's only really, I would say, about to towards the end of it,
but he that he specifically and explicitly in a letter to some children says that they're going to be seven of them.
Um, so he has decided at that point, but he certainly hasn't at the beginning.
I think it's much more happenstance, and I can see how he might think I'm going to write a book about The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe.
It's going to involve kingship and Jupiter, and things associated with Jupiter are going to be prominent.
Um, but that, I don't think, means that the whole series was intended or that somehow it's a bit reductive in its most extreme form.
That idea, I would say. But but it's it's a really rich book.
I would say, you know, for anyone who hasn't read Planet Narnia, it's really worth reading.
It's very scholarly, is lots to get out of it. Uh, let's listen to interested can be Sussex degree.
Tolkien tried. Um, what do you think?
Like that sort of a study of English. And then don't say like I see it says all the possible influences they might be having.
It seems like. Oh, that's right, territory isn't as big as I'd be like.
And so why do you think? Well, the not stuff went. Well.
I suppose I could say it. I mean, for instance, if it starts with a pitch, an image of a fawn standing in a snowy wood,
then you could say the classical literature is still fairly prominent.
I don't think, I mean, because, of course, part of what Tolkien seems to object to in Narnia is that it isn't just a kind of a consistent worldview,
it's a jumbling of mythologies and literatures,
and therefore the classical side of it, you know, um, Dionysus turns up and Bacchus and,
you know, there's that there are sort of the, um, there are lots of classical moments.
In Narnia. And so I don't think that's all gone away or.
But could it been superseded perhaps. Because I think.
And maybe that is a more productive, um, mode for Lewis in particular.
Um, that the medieval. Um, but I think he's still, you know, that there are there are moments where, you know,
Milton and Shakespeare and there's a, there's a richness to Narnia, which obviously Tolkien.
It didn't appeal to Tolkien in that, if that's to be believed.
But but I think that is what what Lewis is doing, you know, I mean, for instance,
one obvious example of the Milton influence would be the creation of Narnia.
You know, he calls the founding of Narnia and The Magician's Nephew, where, uh,
Aslan is sort of singing the world into being and the animals start to appear.
If you remember, they come out from under the ground and start bursting through the earth.
Um, then you've got this sort of strange, branching, twig like things, and it turns out to be the antlers of a deer that comes up through the ground.
And then this sort of big baggy trousers, um, elephant comes, comes up,
and he's just got this directly from, um, Milton's description of creation in Paradise Lost.
So, you know, I think Lewis is a bit of a magpie, uh,
and all the things that he likes turn up in Narnia and that's classics is it's some classical stuff as well as is all kinds of English literature.
Thanks again so much for the talk is so fascinating. Um, I was just wondering.
I've done that somewhere. Or, um, the night after The Hobbit.
Mhm. He was possibly inspired to write a children's story because they have been so successful.
It's supporting. Well there's a bit of a gap but it certainly came after it.
And I mean obviously the dating around The Hobbit is slightly tricky as well.
But we know that Lewis was given a copy of the manuscript in the early 1930s to read it.
You know, it didn't get published until 1937. Um, and again, that's largely because, of course, Tolkien wasn't planning to publish publish it himself.
He wrote it for his children. And that's, again, was an interesting contrast because but the first, first of this,
these people I mentioned to write a children's story was actually Owen Barfield, who wrote The Silver Trumpet, which came out in 1925.
Um, and it was. And he lent it to Lewis, who lent it to Tolkien, who read it to his children, and it was a great favourite with them, he says.
So he actually began that process.
Um, but they Barnfield and Tolkien had children that they were reading to, and that's how the stories kind of emerged.
Uh, Lewis did read The Hobbit early on and enthused greatly about it.
Um, and of course, he was a big believer in, you know, reading fairy tales when you were a grown up.
As he says to Lisa, you know, you might you might go off them for a bit, but you'll be old enough one day to read them again.
Um, so in that sense, I think that, you know, The Hobbit could have inspired him as a,
as a concept, but it's it's quite a bit earlier than when he sits down to write banana's story.
Um. So yeah, I mean, it must have made a difference that his friends had written children's stories, I suppose.
And, uh, interesting what you suggest about maybe the success of it, as if perhaps its thinking, you know, like that sort of.
Look, there's money to be made in these books, but I don't just don't think there is still in those terms really.
Like he says, there's, there's a, there's one other article where he's, he's being asked about the origins of the 90 stories,
and he said one, it was one of those moments in my life where I write a fairy story was what I had to do or burst.
So it's coming from within him, I think largely.
I mean, he doesn't really again, explain what he means by that, but but there's something there's something he needed to get down.
And the fairy story, he says, was the only mode in which I could write it.
Um, yeah. Thank you. So I'm just going to read the question, which is in two parts.
Um, it's up to you which one you have. So the question is,
is it ever going to be possible to create a fantasy atmosphere or a universe that is not steeped in the classical mythology, legends,
folk and fairy tales,
language and locations such as Oxford that inspired the fantasy pioneers like Tolkien and Lewis and something closer to, um, C.S. Lewis.
And then where does the London Trilogy differ?
Um, deficit in relation to fantasy versus sci fi?
So I guess so.
I think that's the last piece of that with uh, uh, so I guess the question is, uh, where does the London Trilogy sits in relation to fantasy?
Uh, and sci fi kind of. Can we talk? What do we talk about it, uh, sci fi or is it fantasy still?
Thank you. Oh, that's that's for somebody who really knows about, uh, the sci fi genre.
Um, I would think that.
By modern standards, it's pretty poor sci fi. He's got no interest in any of the technical stuff.
Uh, how you get to Mars and making it remotely believable.
Um, it's a it's more of a kind of what he calls it kind of sort of philosophical.
Um, sci fi. I think maybe it's I mean, it's much closer to kind of HG Wells that got that kind of writing, um, than it is more than sci fi, I suspect.
Um, and the first question was about, oh, yeah, is it possible to write fantasy without.
No, no, you have to do an Oxford English degree. No, I think I think we're making that abundantly clear, aren't we?
You have to read Beowulf. You have to read. Uh, so I in the Green Knight in the original language.
Uh, study your accents and wheezes, and then, you know, you're all set.
Uh, but no, of course you can make you can make things up. Yeah, that's the beauty of it, I guess.
But it's obviously a rich and productive way of sort of drawing on, I mean, Tolkien in particular, I guess.
But I think Lewis too, has has had an important influence on modern fantasy writing.
Do you think that Lewis, in taking inspiration from all of the things around in this perhaps uncreative writing before you shop?
Uh, Penelope sail. Or do you think that we should copy him and also take inspiration from the mundane world around us?
It's a great quote doesn't here about, um, going into about what it means to read about, um, fantastical worlds and magical woods and things.
And so he says that that, that he it's in answer to the you know,
what it does it does it mean that everything seems greatly mundane when you've read a fantasy story and then you're back in the real world?
And he says, reading about Enchanted Woods doesn't actually make you it doesn't make everything else seem completely mundane,
but it makes real woods just a little bit enchanted.
And I think that's what he's what he wants to do is not leave us in this kind of mundane world, but actually try and see how, in fact,
the world that we live in, um,
is full of these kinds of amazing and enchanting kind of concepts and see those potentially as an inspiration to write fantasy.
Um, you know, you don't have to think of all other wardrobes as being completely, um, you know, just boring old, uh, functional wooden wardrobes,
but actually could be all themselves is slightly enchanted and portals into any, anywhere else you might want to go without considering you think.
So.